Negritude, Anne Ntinyari Mwiti

Anne Ntinyari Mwiti is an experienced Kenyan painter with international exposure. Though the theory of existence features heavily in her work, she explores diverse themes, with influences drawn from her experiences of the semi-traditional African culture she grew up in that was quickly evolving into a contemporary one. Mwiti works within an abstract expressionist style to compose paintings that play with color, space and cohesion. Mwiti is a contemporary artist from Kenya, Africa and the World Citizen Artists award winner, 2014. She is also an art lecturer in the Department of Fine Art and Design, Kenyatta University. Anne’s artworks are creations influenced by the contemporary world, African faces, and spiritual expressions, intuitions from within her psyche and landscapes of places she has visited. She grew up on a ten acre coffee farm where she explored different media of expression at the early age of five. Her first drawing that she recalls was a female figure-like Egyptian princess that she scribbled on her father’s mathematics class notes. The human figure became the form that would feature through her work. Her artwork, “A Stitch in Time”, which won the WCA (World Citizen Artists) award, was exhibited at the Belgravia Gallery, London among masters such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Mattisse and Nelson Mandela. Her art is continually evolving through experimentation that creates dynamism that is thought provoking, powerful and magical. She achieves her objectives through the use of diverse themes, techniques, media and styles. She has exhibited in group as well as solo exhibitions locally and internationally.